Energy saving has recently been receiving increasing attention from the viewpoint of global environment protection. Attention is being focused on a power management system, such as a home energy management system (HEMS), for managing power on a house-by-house basis. The HEMS interactively connects household appliances arranged in a house via an information network to control, for example, optimization of power consumption. A technique for connecting a household appliance, for example, a refrigerator, to such an information network is described in Patent Literature 1.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a refrigerator having a top surface on which a communication board including an antenna unit for transmitting and receiving radio waves is mounted. As described in Patent Literature 1, the communication board is mounted on the top surface of the refrigerator so that the antenna unit of the communication board is disposed 3 cm or more apart from a magnet disposed inside a gasket attached to a door of the refrigerator. This arrangement prevents interference of the magnet with radio wave transmission and reception of the antenna unit in this related art. In Patent Literature 1, a line connecting the communication board that controls the refrigerator to a main board is embedded in a thermally insulated box (casing) of the refrigerator. Patent Literature 2 discloses an information processing apparatus having as a communication network adapter provided with a light, a camera, or a human presence sensor.